At last, the UFC women’s featherweight division is going to get some sort of depth.
While the title of the next season of The Ultimate Fighter is called “Heavy Hitters,” it’s not going to be focused just on the heavyweight division.
With news that middleweight champion Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum are set to coach TUF 28, it’s also been confirmed via press release that both heavyweight and women’s featherweight fights are set to compete on the show. Those were the two weight classes that had tryouts earlier this year, but tryouts don’t necessarily confirm that those divisions will make the cut to be on the program.
TUF 28 rosters have not yet been announced.
Women’s featherweight is certainly an important inclusion, as the UFC’s current division is ruled by Cris Cyborg, but the rest of the field currently consists of Holly Holm and Megan Anderson. This is an encouraging that the UFC is actually interested in building women’s 145.
Heavyweight is also one of the UFC’s less stacked divisions, although they’ve not had a heavyweight US-based TUF since season 10, when Roy Nelson knocked out Brendan Schaub. One person who’s expected to be part of TUF 28 is Josh Parisian, who won by 31-second TKO on Contender Series a couple of weeks ago but was instead offered a spot on TUF in lieu of a UFC contract.
TUF: Heavy Hitters premieres on FS1 on Wednesday, August 29th and wraps up with the live finale on Friday, November 30th in Las Vegas, Nevada. Whittaker and Gastelum will fight for the UFC title in December at an event TBD.